Tiger conservation initiatives in China however, have never enjoyed much state support, a far cry from the abundance of funding and nature reserves devoted to China's other flagship indigenous mammalian species - the Giant Panda.
The tiger's fearsome reputation and its need for extensive territory in which to roam has made reintroduction of the species a major challenge in China's highly populated south.
"The panda and man can exist peacefully together, but an element of danger separates the relationship between tiger and man," said Xu Guoyi, the mayor of Zixi who is seeking financing of around $24 million to build a 20 square kilometer fenced eco-tourism reserve for "rewilded" South China tigers.
"This project is of course more difficult than the panda project, because pandas are a national conservation priority," Xu added, saying he was now lobbying the government for funding, without which the project might not get off the ground.
"If the (South China) tiger can help preserve wild habitat as opposed to being simply a source of conflict right now . that's going to be positive for tigers and biodiversity," said Philip Nyhus, a tiger expert from Colby college in the U.S. who advises the Chinese government on tiger conservation.
PAPER TIGERS?
Unlike the cuddly Giant Panda, an icon for the upcoming Olympics, the Chinese tiger's plight had been far less prominent in the public eye, garnering few headlines or attention.
Last October however, public sentiment flared when a poor farmer took what he claimed were the first photos of a wild tiger in decades, his story backed by local forestry officials.
The photos sparked an Internet and public frenzy, as euphoria at the rediscovery turned to anger, with bloggers and citizens dissecting the images to expose them as digitally altered fakes.
Public outrage at the "Tigergate" scandal led to the eventual sacking of 13 provincial officials in a rare show of people power in communist China.
Another recent video of a purported wild tiger in Hunan was exposed as a scam of a domesticated tiger plucked from a circus.
"It's so gratifying to see so many people paid attention and wanted to contribute money to our fund," said Quan, who has battled public indifference and bureaucratic redtape for years.
"China needs a tiger, a national symbol to resurrect its cultural value and its biological values," she added.
Despite the hoaxes, villagers in some of the remoter areas of south China, still believe tigers still exist against the odds.
Hou Fengwen, a teacher in a Jiangxi village, says he heard a growl on a mountain trek with his family two years ago.
"We heard a tiger calling, the sound wasn't loud, but the three of us felt the ground trembling slightly," he said, adding a subsequent search of the surrounding hills showed up nothing.
"There are tigers here, we just can't find them."
